der mann ohne eigenschaften

I know that I am extremely f-ing late to the party but Bernie Sanders has changed the world!? First he forced Hillary Clinton to go to the left - well, we know that might not have mattered - then he did the same with Joe Biden. And now, this left will spread over the world. Changing the world.

See people point out that it has happened before. 1981 Ronald Reagan aggressivity pushed for neo-liberalism to the US. After that neo-liberalism spread over the world. Thaẗ́’s relevant for us too. Back then no one might have thought that a social democratic country with high economic equality like Sweden would follow Reagan. But the country did. Now you can read claims like Sweden today is more right wing than it has been since 1917, or that the ex-communist are to the right of the Social democrats in the 1970s.

In this line of thinking it started with Reagan’s economic politics. But, now, Biden’s, Sanders inspired, economic politics will kill neo-liberalism. It will spread over the world, just like Reagan's politics did forty years ago.

( Somebody is wrong on the internet. )
Then if I should comment more trivial on US politics and one phenomenon I don’t think it would affect us. Isn’t one thing with Caitlyn Jenner that she was born in 1949 and now wants a new career in politics. They say that back when Bismarck decided the retirement age should be 65 years old, almost no workers actually got that old. Today, rich people can get a new career six years after they are 65. Because rich people, beside Steve Jobs, are immortal. Then people also like to compare US politcs with the last years of the Soviet. That the three or the four last general secretaries of Soivet died on the post and all were younger when they died than Trump, Biden and Sanders were during the last election. American politicians lives longer than the Soivet did.

Short. So just one or two days after I learned the phrase ”democratic backsliding” (and used the words in an entry, but that’s not important) I read the headline that Polish people already are seeking asylum in Sweden. It likely not that many(?) In any way, would this be the first time since the Kosovo war in 1999, we have asylum seekers from Europe?

One of those things. A few days ago I saw a demonstration, in my hometown, supporting the Kurds.



Do US presidents get an extra bonus every time they screw over the Kurds? Okay, it might not just be the US that does that. I don’t know. I just know that one president that also screwed the Kurds died last year. Meaning it's not the first time.


Or I can post another photo from my hometown. I wonder if one of those languages the message is on, is Kurdish.




I just look at the pictures as saying something about the world today.

Sometimes one wonder if the far right troll online destroy for themselves. I used to think that Budapest was a really nice city. I used to think that islamic extremist was a bigger threat to democracy than far right extremism. Today I have exchanged two comments with a far right, Hungarian guy. He lectured me that I’m living in a dictatorship and a war zone. Why does anyone has the need to write a thing like that? Anyway, now I think the far right , with their lies, is the bigger threat and that Hungary is a shit hole country that just wants our money (via the European union). The thing is, the way the digital media giants feeds us desinformation and hate and bullying is f**king insane. Sweden likely is a good example of that. From rationalwiki Being a Swede on the internet has to be a pretty wild ride, what with both the left and right using your country as the go-to example of being either a flawless utopia (it's not) or a failed state brimming with rapefugees (it's not). Okay maybe I’m overreacting, at least with the anti-hungarian thing (the criticism of Silicon Valley I think they deserve).

I can be an outsider who walks through society and describe it. Describe the state they think is a failed state. Last weekend they had organised a big screen showing on the town square of the movie Sami blood: Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sámi girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930's and race biology examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life, she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture. I was there to watch some of the movie and to see if anyone I know was there. To be an observer. And yes, back in 1930s, when they thought the phrase “race hygiene” was more than a pseudoscience, race biology was really big. Sweden was the first country to create an institute for racial biology. This in contrast to the last decade. The same country decided to take in refugees on a larger scale than our neighbouring countries would ever dream about doing. We went from racism being mainstream to the other end. If my high school knowledge of Hegel is anything to go after the first, race hygiene, is a thesis, while mass immigration is the antithesis. Lets see if we’ll get a synthesis of those two.


Sure this country has problems. I’m not saying anything else. For example the growing inequality between the rich and poor (however I don’t think I’m crazy if I say other countries have the same problem). On the other hand, to write another observation, the other day I saw a poster on a bulletin board informing in six language that you could take your baby to the city library and talk Swedish with other mothers. A thing like that can be enough to make me optimistic. And I recently read an article by a Syrian, or we should say Swedish of Syrian background, claiming that the Syrian war, as tragic as it is, for us has lead to: “that Sweden has had its greatest academic influx so far, highly trained engineers, doctors and economists of working age who can quickly contribute to society.” I hope he is right. A quarter of a century ago we could successfully take in 100000 Bosnians during the Yugoslavian war. I’m not only writing that since I, half a decade ago, had kind of a crush on a girl with Bosnian background. The Local says so too, also the Washinton post. So a quarter of a century in the future it might turn out it was a good thing to take in Syrian refugees. I have myself seen classroom there they have teached Swedish to Syrians doctors and nurses. If that’s a drop in the sea, or if it really makes a different, I don’t know. At the end, I could write so much more on migration. I haven’t even mentioned any personal experience on immigrants. However turning this into a blog just about my thoughts about one subject? No, that’s not what I want.

Oh, yeah, the movie. I met a guy I know, but he had already seen the movie and he left. It was cold. They sold coffee and reindeer taco - you know you’re in northern Scandinavia when you see reindeer taco for sale. I thought the movie was supposed to start at 14.00. However when I left a quarter over two, the movie still hadn’t started. What had started at two o’clock was an interview with the woman behind the movie. Now I know her background, but I still haven’t seen the movie.

 In the end of last summer I posted a photo of the town square (in the town called Östersund) there they had a big screen TV to watch a football match (Europa League game against a Greek team). During that event a lorry was parked on the road to the square to protect from potential terrorist attacks with a car. 

 So according to the internet there are far right americans who think AFA “supersoldiers” would start a second american civil war today. Snopes Is antifa planning a civil war. In the Canadian tv show Regenesis Dr David Sandström says the following: "There are genetics programs out there under way right now that make the Manhattan Project look like a bunch of babies playing with Lego blocks."  He must have talked about Canadian, AFA Supersoldiers.

Because I work part time in a bookstore this was one random thought I had at work today: They might actually give the nobel prize in literature to an American this year. Probably not since they gave it to an American last year, but they could do it as an anti-Trump statement. Writers are intellectuals, intellectuals doesn't support that kind of politics - except those who do, but most don’t. Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka (b. 1934, Nobel prize winner in literature 1986) even made his Green card “inoperable” in protest of Trump. Yeah, to give an American intellectual a Nobel prize should be an anti-Trump thing.

First I’m not an expert, everything I write here should be taken with a pinch of salt. That said, if I have understood it correctly. After the US election with Trump and Sanders, people said that the political center was dead. Now the guy who talk about a political centre revolution, got more votes in the first round of the French president election than le Pen, the far right candidate.

Another observation. Back in the fall of 2001 people said that next terrorist attack could be even worse. Sixteen year later I am happy to say that terrorism in the west now means “‘lone wolf’ that hijack cars”. Well, obvious I'm not happy the attacks happen. But the latest attacks have looked more like a sign of desperation than of strange. And experts can point out there were more terrorism attacks in Europe in the 70s and 80s than it is now*. And they can speculate that islamic extremism already has been through to the rubbish-heap of history.

So I am casual optimistic about the world. For myself I am not optimistic.

*Not a perfect parable. There are much fewer attacks now, but single terror attacks often have higher body count than they had in those decades.